


Zara's Terrible Horrible Not Good Day With Silver Lining

by kosmonauttihai



Category: Jurassic World Trilogy (Movies)
Genre: F/F, one of those character doesn't die scene rewrites because I wanted one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-22 01:57:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16588565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kosmonauttihai/pseuds/kosmonauttihai
Summary: A survival and rescue in the time of Pterosauria.





	Zara's Terrible Horrible Not Good Day With Silver Lining

Dodging fleeing park guests and flying dinosaurs alike (no, not dinosaurs—the ones that could fly or swim weren't dinosaurs, but _you_ try to remember what the correct term was while narrowly avoiding having them bite your head off), Zara could now say with absolute certainty that nothing about this day was what she had signed up for. She even had it in writing, because she had read her contract enough times that she had it memorized. When you took a job on an island full of dinosaurs and other extremely dangerous creatures, that was only sensible.  
  
By some miracle, she suddenly spotted Claire's nephews across the street.  
  
Not quite letting herself sigh with relief, what with the containment anomaly still ongoing around her, she did her best to wade through the crown to them. At least one thing had not gone wrong irreparably. The babysitting job had been an annoyance she had put up with as a favor for Claire, who she could tell was already doing a favor to the boys' parents and had entirely too much on her plate without family dropping by on short notice on the same day her boss did, but it was hardly the kids' fault, and either way she had been worried sick about them.  
  
Over the course of an hour her worst case scenarios for where they could have gotten off to had evolved from finding a way to pass for old enough to be served at Margaritaville, to sneaking into the T. rex paddock. It wasn't like no kid before them had tried either feat, there were precautions upon precautions in place for a reason. It would be just her luck that Claire's sister's kids would be the ones to figure out a way past them. If they took after their aunt at all, they would be smart and creative enough.  
  
"Stop running!" was for some reason the first thing she said to them. A silly request, really, why would anyone do that in the current situation? But they were going in the direction away from her, and she was never going to wear high heels to work in a dinosaur park again. It was probably not a good idea to take them off now, in a sea of people with shoes on. She didn't want to lose her toes any more than she did her head.  
  
When she finally caught up to the boys, it was because they had stopped in the middle of the square to take in the horrifying view. Oh dear, that was no good, either, was it—they would be sitting ducks for giant, prehistoric, people-eating ducks (Pteranodons! See, she did know the term).  
  
"Don't just stand there!" she managed to instruct them, when suddenly she felt claws on her shoulders and the end of her sentence turned into a scream as she was yanked into the air.  
  
And the boys had the nerve to keep just standing there.  
  
Zara tried to wriggle herself free, but the creature had a firm hold that would not let go without taking her shoulders with it.  
  
This was why you did not take a job on a dinosaur (and non-dinosaur) island no matter how hard you kept hoping the woman you got to work with was bi. Still a better decision she had made for a chance at love than staying engaged to Alec, until she had finally clued on to that his inability to find less gross friends was a pattern and not an exception, when her not letting him have a bachelor party with them was enough for him to threaten to call off the wedding on a two days' notice. He hadn't gone through with it, but she had.  
  
The Pteranodon got tangled in an advertisement banner and one foot's claws let go their hold. Zara screamed all the louder when the shift of balance tore at the shoulder still in the creature's clutches, but she managed to steady herself by grabbing onto the leg holding her. She had to do something. It would right itself within seconds, and then it would fly away, rise too high to safely get away from.  
  
Suddenly one of the animal's wings was right in front of her face, and before Zara had even thought it through she had grabbed the wing by the leathery part with one hand. There was a loud shriek from above her, and then she was falling.  
  
It had let her go.  
  
Zara didn't have time to worry about whether she had been too far off the ground after all, when she already hit it. By sheer good luck she managed to shield her head on her forearm when it would have hit the pavement from the disorienting bounce her body did—or bad luck, as it deprived her of a break in the form of a moment of unconsciousness. She reminded herself she still had to get away.  
  
Her leg and hip burned and her shoulder stung, but she could probably move. That meant no broken bones, right? You could probably move even with broken bones while powered by all the adrenaline brought by almost getting eaten alive. She should make a joke later, when safe and looking back on this, of wishing she had known about that during her all-nighters for uni finals as an alternative to a caffeine adiction. Perhaps not right away, though—people had died, it would be tasteless and bad publicity. If getting up didn't hurt so much she might have laughed at the idea that she could manage to inflict on the park worse publicity than people getting eaten alive on Main Street would in the first place.  
  
Claire was going to have so much damage control to do.  
  
Zara staggered onto her feet and looked around her. It was like the air itself was teeming with screams, bleeding people, and ravenous monsters (or, animals doing what animals did, she supposed, but right now what they were doing was descending upon a crowd of _mostly families with children_ like they hadn't been fed properly in their enclosure all their lives—and that was a question that would certainly come up during the aforementioned damage control, then: _had_ they really been?). For the first time since her careful memorization of the park's layout on her first day, she was lost.  
  
What had happened to the boys? She had lost sight of them again! Forget sneaking into the T. rex paddock, they could be getting carried around right now as she had just been. She thought she saw a familiar face through the crowd, and just as she was about to call out, she got tackled back to the ground.  
  
One of those things was on her back! It had to be smaller, or it would have crushed her by standing on her. Zara ignored the pain and put all her weight into rolling over, and flung her arms forward, to protect her face and neck. She caught the creature's—Dimorphodon's—beak? snout? in one hand and brought the other to push at the body to keep its talons away. She could feel her strength ebbing away already, and could but scream as the sharp teeth got closer and closer. That's what you got for already having your mind on the press conference before the incident was even over! She was going to bring bad publicity after all, by adding to the death toll!  
  
Something hit the Dimorphodon's head from the side with two loud thuds, making her arms shake along with the creature's body. A third hit threw her attacker to the side and off her.  
  
Before it recovered enough to charge at her again, it had gotten two tranquilizer darts right in its neck. That was a lot for such a small animal, she thought, but couldn't be too sorry if it overdosed. The drug didn't take effect immediately, but seemed to put the wretched being off her as a meal. As it stumbled away along the ground, Zara turned to look up at her savior.  
  
Goddess and actual angel Claire Dearing lowered the tranquilizer gun and reached down to help her get up, and no, nothing currently going on was what Zara had signed up for, but this part was not so unwelcome.  
  
"I could kiss you for that!" Zara had declared before her brain caught up with her mouth. But she could indeed kiss Claire for much less, and if there was a time to be honest about it, well, if this wasn't it then maybe another Pteranodon would show up to carry her away before she got too embarrassed about that.  
  
Claire took a few heavy breaths, that were more concerning than sexy, admittedly, because suddenly Zara paid attention to Claire looking like she had ran through the entire island to get where she was, and oh no, her clothes—had she been attacked, too?  
  
"You could," Claire said, and Zara only waited for her to finish inhaling afterwards, before she did, indeed, kiss her.  
  
Time stopped and the world faded away from around them for exactly three seconds, before they pulled apart enough to lean their foreheads together, and actually just to lean on each other quite a bit, to stay upright. It would be lovely for that to be because the kiss had been so dizzying, but unfortunately the surrounding world had faded back into existence, being a much more likely culprit than a quick, and not exactly optimally aligned, press of lips.  
  
"Oh my God, there's blood all over you!" Claire gasped.  
  
"It's only because of all the bleeding," Zara explained, very reassuringly, or at least it felt like it was at the moment. "What about you?"  
  
"Why would I—" Claire stared to say, then seemed to realize the state of her person, herself. To be fair the blood that was on her white clothes now had probably not been there yet before she had pulled Zara into her arms. She shook her head. "I'm fine. Can you walk?"  
  
"I have no idea," said Zara, then glanced over Claire's shoulder because she could have sworn she had seen—  
  
"Aunt Claire?"

Claire turned to look, and with a scream of her nephews' names confirmed Zara had not been hallucinating. Before she could decide between the merits of running to them to make sure they were in one piece and those of keeping Zara on her feet, the boys had had the courtesy of beginning to run to her instead. She didn't turn back to Zara as she spoke, her gaze firmly on the two children as they approached in case something made the mistake of sinking its claws in their shoulders, too, before they reached her. Her grasp on Zara tightened, because of course she wasn't safe yet, either. "We should do that properly another time. The kissing. Today's not very good for me."  
  
"I-I believe the rest of your week will be either cleared, or booked full of answering questions about today," Zara said, a little dazed, the script of their words both surreal and comforting in the chaos. "I should be able to find a way to fit that in," she assured with a nod that felt like a nervous twitch.  
  
Claire let go of her on one side, but only so Zach could take over half of the task of supporting her, and Claire could hug the boys, too as best she could under the circumstances, while she inquired if they were all right and where they had disappeared to. The four of them hobbled away from the open street to somewhere safer with Claire's arms wrapped around all of the other three as she herded them forward.

Zara was disorientated and the pain from her injuries was starting to make itself known in full on the way towards first aid. But she knew she was alive, because just before Claire had to withdraw her embrace again to dig her cell phone out of her pocket, Zara felt her give her hand a squeeze.


End file.
